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Does his writing have any instructional qualities? I'd read it for good Eco-gnomic sense.
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Nov 3, 2015 20:45
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I think guy a person is a real dumberto
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Nov 3, 2015 20:57
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Cercadelmar posted:rip White Teeth. I'm reading that right now and it's really good - Zadie Smith manages to write a lot of people with different backgrounds and not make it seem horribly cliched or too supportive of any one particular belief.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:39
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End Of Worlds posted:and also I spent all of my disposable income for the month on booze Too bad there aren't public or university owned buildings where you can borrow books for free.
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Nov 10, 2015 02:15
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Effectronica posted:*steps into friendly local public library and squeals with delite at the well-stocked YA and wizardbook selections* Touche. I'm spoiled because I live in Ohio and we have some of the best library systems in the country.
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Nov 10, 2015 02:32
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jsoh posted:hi whats a good book for me to read that is available for free legitimately. im a big idiot whos read almost nothing Metamorphoses
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Dec 3, 2015 04:40
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am seriously considering dedicating next year to giant loving books I have never read. Have you read any Gaddis? You could throw the Recognitions or JR on there and say goodbye to a month. I'm going to read Women and Men by Joseph McElroy next year because my girlfriend can get it from her university library. City on Fire as well but that's easier to find.
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Dec 10, 2015 01:37
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Idk guys I read the bible and it inspired me to collect a bunch of foreskins and I'm feeling pretty good about that.
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Dec 15, 2015 01:14
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I really like the idea that junk literature should be taught to high school students so they can appreciate better stuff when they're older but I think having the right teacher makes a large difference. In my IB English class, some of the books we read were The Bell Jar, The Underground Man, Madame Bovary and Native Son and I think that I have a deeper appreciation of these works because they were well taught - The Underground Man might have been the only one I would've picked up independently. I can easily see them being taught poorly though, I had a miserable teacher for my second year of IB English and I completely bounced off of the Shakespeare we read (Hamlet, Othello) and the Cisneros books as well. I'm almost finished with Purity and unless it dramatically changes in the last fifty pages (which I don't think it will) it's a really mediocre book. The characters are boring and Franzen seems to be stuck on the anti-internet diatribe that I've seen in a few other boring books like Dave Egger's The Circle. There are also parts where he uses clumsy language to express how characters have trouble thinking as adults in certain areas and it just comes off incredibly stilted to read a fifty year old man think about his "stiffy". If there's one thing I know male writers can do well, it's artfully describe tumescence. The worst part of the book is that it's not bad enough to be entirely not worth reading if you like Franzen - the way that he brings the characters together is interesting and he does make sure that some of them have opposing viewpoints that he almost wants to treat seriously. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have nothing else to read. I picked up City on Fire so I'll have thoughts on that in a few weeks.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:47
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This is the worst derail. Relevant: I read the first episode of city on fire yesterday (out of seven). When the author said he wanted it to be the literary equivalent of an HBO box set he was being pretty drat literal.
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Dec 21, 2015 21:53
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blue squares posted:But did you like it? I'm not sure. It's well written and interesting but it's also very humorless. I'll have to read the rest of the book before I make a judgement but if it continues like the first hundred pages I'd say it's a good book but not for me. It's like if Jonathan Franzen wrote a Thomas Pynchon novel if that makes sense.
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Dec 21, 2015 23:33
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City on fire might be good. A couple people in here have mentioned that they're planning to read it.
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Dec 27, 2015 16:57
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The boring summary actually makes it seem decently interesting.
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Dec 30, 2015 20:14
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I tried to read wheel of time but you can basically figure out what happens in a book by looking at the cover. I think my least favorite thing about fantasy is when a book tries to set up a whole universe by basically ripping off Tolkien and giving everything slightly different names. I just want to read a book, I don't give a poo poo about the history and farming culture of your not-Shire.
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Jan 5, 2016 16:56
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This argument is facile because it's based on the assumption that nerds need a reason to feel smugly superior. All of nerd culture is based around posturing about how other culture is lesser. To keep this on track, Ready Player One is the greatest book ever written.
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Jan 5, 2016 20:50
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I don't think characters have to be likeable, they just have to be interesting. I'm not reading to make a friend; I certainly wouldn't want to spend time with Humbert Humbert but I enjoyed Lolita.
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Jan 6, 2016 18:28
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The low votes are from a sweaty half-crazed George R.R. Martin, registering accounts just to lower the rating on this thread. I'm about sixty percent of the way through City On Fire. I'll do a long post on what I thought about the book and all that when I'm done but I'm leaning pretty positive right now.
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Jan 7, 2016 18:03
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I don't know if I posted this in the thread before, but I have a friend who grew up in an apartment building in NYC where Thomas Pynchon, his wife and son lived at the time. He said that his wife did most of the socializing and everything was in her name but that Pynchon would occasionally be at tenant meetings and that he looked somewhat like Kurt Vonnegut.
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Jan 12, 2016 02:58
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what is surreal literature
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Jan 15, 2016 16:39
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Putting words in people's mouths What is this, if on winters night a traveler?
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Jan 15, 2016 16:48
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You quoted someone else and attributed it to me (unless awful app is loving up) If on winters night a traveler is all second person - it tells the reader what they're doing. You told me what I said so second person yadda yadda, attempt at joke.
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Jan 15, 2016 16:56
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I use the library or take them from my parents house. I think the only new book I bought this year was City On Fire.
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Jan 16, 2016 16:21
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What a bizarre accusation. Atwood is a Canadian novelist who writes literary sci-fi and doesn't like the sci-fi label.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:01
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You're thinking of John Updike
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Jan 18, 2016 21:30
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February botm should be "Black Snow". It's recent, dreary, short and I'm pretty sure Mel is the only other person who's already read it.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:06
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Yeah, let these sentences devoid of context that are being used specifically to make you think the novel is bad shape your opinion. I have about two hundred pages left in it. It's worth reading.
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Jan 21, 2016 20:31
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Ulysses is the Homestuck of the 20th century. Edit: Actual content - has anyone read the Big Green Tent, Martin John or The Mark and the Void? I just got all three from the library and I'm wondering which to read first. Probably the Mark and the Void because it looks a lot less dense than the books I've been reading. Cloks fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 01:03
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I haven't read Skippy Dies so maybe I'll read that first.
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Jan 24, 2016 03:26
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The connections make more sense as the book goes on - some of them are a little too good to be true but the book switches to back stories that explain some of them and others are elucidated through the present story. There is one instance near the end of the book (right before the blackout) where four characters are in the same room that made me roll my eyes.
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Jan 26, 2016 06:44
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That's a good way of putting it. That's exactly the section I mean, Charlie was there as well. I think that Hallberg just wanted to be at his big showcase at that point. I have Opinions on the book that I'll codify when I'm done.
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Jan 27, 2016 01:39
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blue squares posted:Also it is so hard to read one book at a time, or even two or three. I want to be reading all of my unread books at the same time I'm pretty good at reading one book at a time but since this thread, I have at least five I want to read out from the library at all times.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:00
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blue squares posted:Just finished The Goldfinch. I thought it was a great book, but I'm not sure why it won the Pulitzer. I finished it not knowing what it was really trying to say as a work of art. There is the ending that is Theo reflecting on life and the human condition, and he twice talks about "people want what they want and that's it, even if its bad for them," but I don't know if the work as a whole really fits that statement. I thought it would be really cool to get a signed copy of Purity because I really liked freedom and the corrections. Not the best signed book I own. I also have a signed Terry Pratchett novel which is really cool although not serious literature; I got a signed copy of Between the World and Me when I saw Coates speak at my former university. My mom has a signed, personalized copy of Never Let Me Go that pretty much trumps anything I have.
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Jan 30, 2016 06:47
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I made it to the point in recognitions where the main character visits his hometown around halfway through the novel. I remember it being funny, boring, bizarre and indecipherable.
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Jan 30, 2016 16:30
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Purity is full of weird sex stuff that makes me wonder if Franzen should be writing female characters
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Feb 1, 2016 18:39
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blue squares posted:My life is full of weird sex stuff. Sex is weird, get over it Do you get wacky and switch hands sometime? There were few if any relationships in Purity that portrayed sex positively - it was only a tool used for power. The sex also seemed inextricably linked with characters putting themselves into negative situations, where they had to cede their agency. This might have been a point in the book that I'm blithely missing.
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Feb 1, 2016 18:47
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You're right, he has written women much better in the past, especially in Strong Motion and Freedom.
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Feb 1, 2016 19:15
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A human heart posted:I'm never going to read a Jonathan Franzen book but I did read that really stupid essay he wrote complaining that Gaddis books were too hard to read, it's cool in a way because he outs himself as a total idiot when he says that he's never been able to finish JR, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, and probably some other books. I think you missed the point of the essay; he wrote about why he wasn't able to finish the books and used that to examine the responsibility that an author has to the reader. Being able to intelligently explain why he couldn't finish the books exculpates him from idiocy, it seems to be a matter of time and dedication rather than intelligence.
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Feb 2, 2016 00:09
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at the date posted:Wrong-o. Prairie is still great. The Tales from Lake Woebegone segment in the San Francisco show a couple weeks ago was mesmerizing. Car Talk is still better than pretty much everything else on the radio. Those other two are beneath the dignity of criticism and I'm convinced you're trolling. Same but the opposite opinion.
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Feb 4, 2016 04:36
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I think Charlie is a well written obnoxious character. He's a teenager who's experienced a traumatic event and is lashing out rather than confronting it.
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Feb 4, 2016 17:00
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Amory is a cartoon villain. He is never not a cartoon villain.
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Feb 4, 2016 17:27
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